The HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile is the world's most successful planet finder [1]. The HARPS team, led by Michel Mayor (University of Geneva, Switzerland), today announced the discovery of more than 50 new exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, including sixteen super-Earths [2]. This is the largest number of such planets ever announced at one time [3]. The new findings are being presented at a conference on Extreme Solar Systems where 350 exoplanet experts are meeting in Wyoming, USA.

"The harvest of discoveries from HARPS has exceeded all expectations and includes an exceptionally rich population of super-Earths and Neptune-type planets hosted by stars very similar to our Sun. And even better — the new results show that the pace of discovery is accelerating," says Mayor.

In the eight years since it started surveying stars like the Sun using the radial velocity technique HARPS has been used to discover more than 150 new planets. About two thirds of all the known exoplanets with masses less than that of Neptune [4] were discovered by HARPS. These exceptional results are the fruit of several hundred nights of HARPS observations [5].

Working with HARPS observations of 376 Sun-like stars, astronomers have now also much improved the estimate of how likely it is that a star like the Sun is host to low-mass planets (as opposed to gaseous giants). They find that about 40% of such stars have at least one planet less massive than Saturn. The majority of exoplanets of Neptune mass or less appear to be in systems with multiple planets.

With upgrades to both hardware and software systems in progress, HARPS is being pushed to the next level of stability and sensitivity to search for rocky planets that could support life. Ten nearby stars similar to the Sun were selected for a new survey. These stars had already been observed by HARPS and are known to be suitable for extremely precise radial velocity measurements. After two years of work, the team of astronomers has discovered five new planets with masses less than five times that of Earth.

"These planets will be among the best targets for future space telescopes to look for signs of life in the planet's atmosphere by looking for chemical signatures such as evidence of oxygen," explains Francesco Pepe (Geneva Observatory, Switzerland), the lead author of one of the recent papers.

This artist's impression shows the planet orbiting the Sun-like star HD 85512 in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sail). This planet is one of sixteen super-Earths discovered by the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESOs La Silla Observatory. This planet is about 3.6 times as massive as the Earth and lies at the edge of the habitable zone around the star, where liquid water, and perhaps even life, could potentially exist.
(Photo Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)

One of the recently announced newly discovered planets, HD 85512 b, is estimated to be only 3.6 times the mass of the Earth [6] and is located at the edge of the habitable zone — a narrow zone around a star in which water may be present in liquid form if conditions are right [7].

"This is the lowest-mass confirmed planet discovered by the radial velocity method that potentially lies in the habitable zone of its star, and the second low-mass planet discovered by HARPS inside the habitable zone," adds Lisa Kaltenegger (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany and Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Boston, USA), who is an expert on the habitability of exoplanets.

The increasing precision of the new HARPS survey now allows the detection of planets under two Earth masses. HARPS is now so sensitive that it can detect radial velocity amplitudes of significantly less than 4 km/hour [8] — less than walking speed.

"The detection of HD 85512 b is far from the limit of HARPS and demonstrates the possibility of discovering other super-Earths in the habitable zones around stars similar to the Sun," adds Mayor.

These results make astronomers confident that they are close to discovering other small rocky habitable planets around stars similar to our Sun. New instruments are planned to further this search. These include a copy of HARPS to be installed on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo in the Canary Islands, to survey stars in the northern sky, as well as a new and more powerful planet-finder, called ESPRESSO, to be installed on ESO's Very Large Telescope in 2016 [9]. Looking further into the future also the CODEX instrument on the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will push this technique to a higher level.

"In the coming ten to twenty years we should have the first list of potentially habitable planets in the Sun's neighbourhood. Making such a list is essential before future experiments can search for possible spectroscopic signatures of life in the exoplanet atmospheres," concludes Michel Mayor, who discovered the first-ever exoplanet around a normal star in 1995.

The HARPS spectrograph on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile is the world's most successful planet finder [1]. The HARPS team, led by Michel Mayor (University of Geneva, Switzerland), today announced the discovery of more than 50 new exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, including sixteen super-Earths [2]. This is the largest number of such planets ever announced at one time [3]. The new findings are being presented at a conference on Extreme Solar Systems where 350 exoplanet experts are meeting in Wyoming, USA.

"The harvest of discoveries from HARPS has exceeded all expectations and includes an exceptionally rich population of super-Earths and Neptune-type planets hosted by stars very similar to our Sun. And even better — the new results show that the pace of discovery is accelerating," says Mayor.

In the eight years since it started surveying stars like the Sun using the radial velocity technique HARPS has been used to discover more than 150 new planets. About two thirds of all the known exoplanets with masses less than that of Neptune [4] were discovered by HARPS. These exceptional results are the fruit of several hundred nights of HARPS observations [5].

Working with HARPS observations of 376 Sun-like stars, astronomers have now also much improved the estimate of how likely it is that a star like the Sun is host to low-mass planets (as opposed to gaseous giants). They find that about 40% of such stars have at least one planet less massive than Saturn. The majority of exoplanets of Neptune mass or less appear to be in systems with multiple planets.

With upgrades to both hardware and software systems in progress, HARPS is being pushed to the next level of stability and sensitivity to search for rocky planets that could support life. Ten nearby stars similar to the Sun were selected for a new survey. These stars had already been observed by HARPS and are known to be suitable for extremely precise radial velocity measurements. After two years of work, the team of astronomers has discovered five new planets with masses less than five times that of Earth.

"These planets will be among the best targets for future space telescopes to look for signs of life in the planet's atmosphere by looking for chemical signatures such as evidence of oxygen," explains Francesco Pepe (Geneva Observatory, Switzerland), the lead author of one of the recent papers.

This artist's impression shows the planet orbiting the Sun-like star HD 85512 in the southern constellation of Vela (The Sail). This planet is one of sixteen super-Earths discovered by the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESOs La Silla Observatory. This planet is about 3.6 times as massive as the Earth and lies at the edge of the habitable zone around the star, where liquid water, and perhaps even life, could potentially exist.
(Photo Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)

One of the recently announced newly discovered planets, HD 85512 b, is estimated to be only 3.6 times the mass of the Earth [6] and is located at the edge of the habitable zone — a narrow zone around a star in which water may be present in liquid form if conditions are right [7].

"This is the lowest-mass confirmed planet discovered by the radial velocity method that potentially lies in the habitable zone of its star, and the second low-mass planet discovered by HARPS inside the habitable zone," adds Lisa Kaltenegger (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany and Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Boston, USA), who is an expert on the habitability of exoplanets.

The increasing precision of the new HARPS survey now allows the detection of planets under two Earth masses. HARPS is now so sensitive that it can detect radial velocity amplitudes of significantly less than 4 km/hour [8] — less than walking speed.

"The detection of HD 85512 b is far from the limit of HARPS and demonstrates the possibility of discovering other super-Earths in the habitable zones around stars similar to the Sun," adds Mayor.

These results make astronomers confident that they are close to discovering other small rocky habitable planets around stars similar to our Sun. New instruments are planned to further this search. These include a copy of HARPS to be installed on the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo in the Canary Islands, to survey stars in the northern sky, as well as a new and more powerful planet-finder, called ESPRESSO, to be installed on ESO's Very Large Telescope in 2016 [9]. Looking further into the future also the CODEX instrument on the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will push this technique to a higher level.

"In the coming ten to twenty years we should have the first list of potentially habitable planets in the Sun's neighbourhood. Making such a list is essential before future experiments can search for possible spectroscopic signatures of life in the exoplanet atmospheres," concludes Michel Mayor, who discovered the first-ever exoplanet around a normal star in 1995.

One of the fun things about astronomy is that we can only know so much through empirical observation, yet we can “know” so much more through enlightened, mathematical guesswork. Such is the nature of the most interesting new science paper I’ve come across on the Internet today. In it, Wesley Traub of CalTech crunches some Kepler data and makes a tantalizing mathematical prediction: one-third of sun-like stars have at least one earth-like terrestrial planet orbiting in their habitable zones.

If that turns out to be the case, that’s big news of course. The habitable zone, or the “goldilocks zone” as it’s often known (not to close to the star, not too far away), is the orbital range where it’s possible for liquid water to exist. Thus, it’s the range where life as we know it could feasibly take root.

Technology, Clay Dillow, exoplanets, goldilocks zone, habitable zone, kepler space telescope, Space
The planet-hunting Kepler observatory is designed specifically to seek out planets orbiting distant stars, and thus far its been a boon for exoplanetary science. In 136 days it has scanned some 150,000 target stars looking for the signature wobble exerted on those stars by orbiting satellites. In doing so, it has found 1,235 potential planets.

It’s from that data that Traub has extracted his conclusion. He looked particularly at the stars that are most like our sun--those classified F, G, or K. He then looked at the kinds of planets that are most often found orbiting them and at what ranges they orbit. In his analysis, he notes many interesting (and somewhat expected) things, like the fact that nearly a third of the planets Kepler has found orbit their stars in less than 42 days, putting them too close to be in the habitable zone (this is also because planets closer to their stars are easier for Kepler to see).

Larger terrestrial planets out there in the habitable zone are harder for Kepler to spot, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. And Traub says his number crunching allows us to get a pretty good idea of how many there should be. Using some math we don’t pretend to understand, he plugged in the numbers for longer orbits--orbits in the habitable zone--into his analysis. The finding: "About one-third of FGK stars are predicted to have at least one terrestrial, habitable-zone planet."

That’s not to say they are inhabited, or that they do have liquid water, or that they even exist. But Traub’s math suggests that they should exist, at least until more data changes the equation. And for now, that spells a lot of potential goldilocks planets. Read the full paper via arXiv.

The Search for Alien Life Is On
New missions and discoveries on Earth, within our solar system and beyond are bringing us closer than ever to finding alien life on other planets.
By Jennifer Abbasi Posted 09.09.2011 at 12:48 am

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-09/search

“The genesis of life is as inevitable as the formation of atoms,” is how Andrei Finkelstein, the director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’s Applied Astronomy Institute, explained his ambitious timeline for finding alien life to an audience of astrobiologists and reporters in June. “There is life on other planets, and we will find it in 20 years."

But Tullis Onstott, a geologist at Princeton University who specializes in astrobiology, makes an even more ambitious prediction. “In the next 15 years,” he says, “we will likely discover life on an exoplanet near us.” Scientists have long predicted the discovery of extraterrestrial life, but Finkelstein and Onstott have good reason to be optimistic. Researchers are devoting more resources to the search for alien life than ever before, and they are getting some enticing results.

Drilling For Extreme Life

Kevin Hand

For the past 20 million years, Lake Vostok has been sealed beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. This winter, after nearly 22 years of work, Russian researchers will use mechanical and thermal drills to punch through the final 100 feet before liquid water. Microbes found in Vostok could inform the search for life on the Jovian ice moon Europa, for which a mission could launch in the next decade, and other moons in our solar system thought to contain bodies of liquid water, such as Enceladus and Ganymede.

Drilling For Extreme Life: How It Works

Kevin Hand

THE SITE

Vostok Station once recorded the lowest temperature on Earth: –128ºF. Fortunately for researchers, average temperatures in the austral summer hover around –33º.The Russian team will commence drilling in December. Once scientists reach liquid water, they will allow water to rise up the borehole and freeze over the winter. They will return to Vostok Station in December 2012 to test the core for life.
THE DRILL

A thermal drill tethered to a power cable from the surface will penetrate the final 30 feet of ice. When the drill approaches the water surface, pressure and water sensors will trigger an expandable borehole packer to seal off the channel, preventing drilling fluid from contaminating the lake and allowing scientists to control how quickly the water will rise.
THE LAKE

Lake Vostok, one of the world’s largest lakes by volume, contains more than 1,000 cubic miles of water. At its farthest depths, some 14,000 feet below the surface, pressure reaches up to 438 atmospheres. If drilled improperly, the pressurized water could race up the borehole, causing an explosion powerful enough to destroy Vostok Station.

Bringing Mars Home, Part One

Kevin Hand

To determine whether life lives or has lived on Mars, scientists will most likely need to bring a sample of the planet back to Earth. The threestage NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return mission, scheduled to run from 2018 to 2027, will involve rovers, a launcher, and an orbiter equipped with an Earth Entry Vehicle (EEV) that will carry the rocks to Earth for testing.
PHASE ONE, 2019-2021: COLLECT AND CACHE

Following launch in 2018, a rover will arrive on Mars in January 2019 and will spend nearly two years collecting rocks with a rotary coring drill. After placing as many as 40 cores in a three-inch-wide cylindrical cache, the mobile ’bot will return to its landing site and place the container on the ground.

Bringing Mars Home, Part Two

Kevin Hand

PHASE TWO, 2025-2026: FETCH AND LAUNCH

A lander carrying the fetch rover and Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) will touch down on Mars in September 2025. Over the next three months, the rover will retrieve the cache—up to a nine-mile round-trip journey—and package the rocks in an 11-pound Orbiting Sample (OS) sphere stored inside the MAV. By the following May, the MAV rocket will launch and release the OS into orbit.

Bringing Mars Home, Part Three

Kevin Hand

PHASE THREE, 2026-2027: RENDEZVOUS AND RETURN

An orbiter will arrive at Mars in the summer of 2023. The craft will use optical and radio-frequency tracking systems to monitor the OS launch and will rendezvous with the samples in around May 2026. The orbiter will capture the OS in a basket and transfer it to the onboard eeV—a three-foot-wide, impact-resistant, heat-shielded craft—before setting out for Earth. On descent to Earth in late 2027, the EEV will decouple from the orbiter and crash-land on the planet. The quarantined samples would then be safely recovered.

Spotting Distant Life

Kevin Hand

To view life on other worlds, scientists will need to use a space-based telescope to scan for biosignatures in an exoplanet’s atmosphere while blocking out starlight that could skew results. The New Worlds Observer, a design developed at the University of Colorado, pairs an ultraviolet-optical-infrared telescope with an external starshade.
THE STARSHADE

The 160-foot-wide starshade moves independently to position itself between the telescope and the star. Its 16 “petals” diffract light away from the center of the shadow it casts onto the observatory.
THE TELESCOPE

The observatory’s 13-foot aperture will collect enough ultraviolet and infrared light reflecting off the planet to distinguish it from interplanetary dust. Future telescope designs will also probably incorporate an internal coronagraph, a device on the instrument that will blot out starlight that slips past the shade.

Searching For New Earths

Courtesy European Southern Observatory/S. Brunier

In 1995 a Swiss team scanning the Milky Way discovered 51 Pegasi b, the first known exoplanet orbiting a sunlike star. Since then, scientists using ground-based and space telescopes have found more than 500 exoplanets in the galaxy. Currently only one, Gliese 581 d is considered a potential Earth analogue—it may even have oceans—but the number will grow. Kepler, a photometric telescope that points toward the constellations Cygnus and Lyra, could find as many as 3,000 new worlds by the end of the decade.

Do Good, Find Aliens

Redding Record Searchlight / Zumapress.com

In April, after the National Science Foundation and the state of California cut funding for radio astronomy, the Allen Telescope Array (ATA) at Hat Creek Radio Observatory, the SETI Institute’s primary listening post, went dark for the first time in nearly four years. The ATA scans deep space for alien radio signals, which some scientists say could be our best chance of finding intelligent life.

To replace the estimated $5 million it will cost to get the ATA back online full time for two years, SETI introduced a new program called SETIStars in June. For $15, donors can sponsor three-minute blocks of telescope data. In March, SETI launched the beta version of another program, a citizen-science application called setiQuest Explorer. Amateur alien hunters will be able to analyze radio-telescope data for signs of contact on their computers, tablet or mobile phone. The institute’s public outreach is paying off. By August, SETIStars had generated more than $200,000, enough to turn the ATA back on, at least for a little while.

Since 1996, when NASA created its current astrobiology program, the agency has increased the annual budget from $10 million to $55 million. In that same period, the overall number of astrobiologists increased to a few thousand worldwide, and the number of papers they published rose from around 40 to nearly 3,000. Informed by such work, NASA has planned a full slate of search-for-life missions for the next two decades. This year, scientists using data from the Kepler space telescope have found evidence of more than 1,200 new exoplanets, 54 of them potentially habitable, and this fall, NASA will send a rover to Mars to search for the chemical signatures of life. In 2018, it plans to send another rover to Mars—one that will eventually provide soil samples that return to Earth.

Scientists have also outlined a two-craft mission to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, and they are designing new telescopes, more sophisticated than Kepler, that could look into distant star systems to spot signs of life directly. What we’ll find remains a mystery, of course, but the way we’ll find it is well mapped out.

THE BACKYARD

The first work starts here at home. By studying life that exists in extreme environments, scientists are learning a great deal about how and where to look for it on other planets. Researchers have found microbes in volcanic calderas, deep ocean vents and arsenic-laden lakes [see “Scientist in a Strange Land,”], and the existence of these “extremophile” life-forms has redefined the concept of habitability on this planet and elsewhere.

Alien Ground: Scientists could use microbes found in Vostok, Whillans and ellsworth, three subglacial lakes in Antarctica, to create DNA probes and biosignature models to be used by future search-for-life missions in our solar system Kevin Hand

Alfonso Davila, a research scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, was part of a team that found microorganisms living in salt crystals in Chile’s ultradry Atacama Desert. The organisms managed to survive on atmospheric water vapor, Davila says, so similar organisms might also survive in salt deposits on Mars, which has enough atmospheric water vapor to form frost. Microbiologist Lyle Whyte of McGill University in Montreal found bacteria living at subzero temperatures in a methane-rich spring on Axel Heiberg Island in the Canadian Arctic Ocean. Similar life-forms could also be the source of the recently discovered methane plumes on Mars. “There could be microorganisms in the deep subsurface of Mars that produce the gas,” Whyte says. And this winter, scientists will get a look at how life might exist on the ice moons of Jupiter. Scientists have yet to tap any of the more than 150 lakes sealed beneath the Antarctic ice cap, but starting in December, research teams will complete three drilling projects in as many years.

Researchers from the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in Russia will reach water first when they drill into Lake Vostok, a body of water roughly the size of Lake Ontario that has been isolated for as long as 20 million years under an ice cap that is now well over two miles thick. Because the water beneath the lake is sealed off, devoid of light and extremely cold, it is an unusually close analogue to Europa, where a thick layer of ice blocks sunlight from reaching a suspected subsurface ocean. “Life in Antarctic subglacial systems will allow us to focus our search for life in Europa’s ocean,” says John Priscu, a microbiologist at Montana State University who in 2014 will melt through half a mile of ice to reach Lake Whillans, 650 miles west of Lake Vostok. “It will allow us to design DNA probes and look for biosignatures in Europa’s ocean.”

The challenge is to get samples without disturbing or contaminating the delicate system. Last February, the Russian team drilled to within 100 feet of the lake water but then had to stop for winter. When work resumes in the austral summer, researchers will switch from a mechanical corer to a heated drill bit to melt through the last 30 feet of ice. The lake water, slowed by an expandable borehole plug on the end of the drill, will rise 100 feet up the hole and freeze. In December 2012, the researchers will return to core and sample it. The samples should generate many clues as to what kind of life can survive in such conditions, even as researchers learn how to better gather such samples in more-difficult conditions. “If there is any chance that Europa’s ice might be thin enough in places for humans to drill or melt into it,” says Robert Pappalardo, an astrobiologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is heading up the science team on the future mission to Europa, “perhaps Vostok and other subglacial lakes can teach us techniques for doing so."page 1 of 4

The Neighborhood: Lessons learned on Earth will guide missions within our solar system Wikimedia Commons

THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Scientists are using lessons learned on Earth to guide upcoming missions within our solar system. Mars will receive the most attention in the near term. At 35 million miles away, the planet transits at the margins of the sun’s habitable zone, the orbital region at which liquid water—and therefore life as we know it—has the best chance of existing on the surface. Mars has no known permanent water flows, but scientists have found ice there and, this summer, evidence of seasonal water flows. They have also found signs of ancient rainfall, lakes and even oceans, which suggests that the planet was once much warmer.

In late November or early December, NASA will launch the Mars Science Laboratory to explore an ancient crater that probably once held water. The car-size rover will search for signs of subsurface ice and scan rocks for carbon compounds, including amino acids, that could indicate the presence of life.

In 2018, NASA will join with the European Space Agency (ESA) to launch an even more ambitious venture: the three-stage Mars Sample Return. In the first stage, a rover will excavate and store 19 to 37 small cores from the planet’s surface in a sealed container, and as early as 2025, a lander will arrive to retrieve the cache and launch it into space, where a final-stage orbiter will intercept it and return the samples to Earth. “There’s only so much you can do with robotic instruments on the surface of another planet,” says Cynthia Phillips, a planetary scientist at the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute. “If we can bring pieces back to Earth and study them in laboratories with all of our instruments, we’re going to learn so much more.”

Such a mission may well turn up evidence, in the form of microbial fossils, that life existed on Mars billions of years ago. But some scientists, including Davila and Whyte, say life could exist there right now. In June, Tullis Onstott co-published a paper in Nature that suggested where it might be. The paper described how a previously unknown species of roundworm survived in an African gold mine nearly a mile below the Earth’s surface—100 times as deep as multicellular life had been observed previously. If it can happen here, Onstott says, it may also be possible on Mars. Complex life may no longer exist on the surface, but this “shows multicellular life could still exist beneath the surface.”

Other nearby worlds may offer even better chances for finding life. NASA plans to send an orbiter and a flyby vessel in a two-stage mission to Europa. The orbiter would send back data that could help scientists confirm the existence and character of a subsurface ocean first detected by Galileo in 1996. The flyby vessel would then examine the moon using infrared spectroscopy, high resolution imaging and ice-penetrating radar to determine the chemical composition of the surface, the ice cap’s thickness and its subsurface processes. The measurements could also suggest whether life developed organically on the moon or was introduced from a meteorite. Neither vessel would probably be able to detect life itself. “We’re not really there yet,” Pappalardo says. “We’re at the habitability stage: Does this environment really have water within, like we think it does?”

Researchers are asking similar questions about two moons of Saturn. The small moon Enceladus ejects a large plume of water vapor from its south pole, and in June researchers studying data from the Cassini orbiter reported that the plume may originate from subsurface saltwater reservoirs. “If there are microbes being spewed out into space by the plume,” Phillips says, “it’s possible that a spacecraft could sample those and find real evidence [of life] without even having to land.” Cassini has also confirmed the presence of methane lakes on the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, and NASA is debating whether to send a ship-like probe to search for signs of life within them in 2016 {see “Space Boat” Headlines, September}.page 2 of 4

THE BEYOND

In 1995, Swiss researchers confirmed the existence of 51 Pegasi b, the first-known exoplanet orbiting a sun-like star. Since then, astronomers have catalogued more than 500 exoplanets. Many of these planets are gas and ice giants incapable of supporting life as we know it, but a few of them, especially those with a mass closer to that of our own world, could have conditions much more amenable to life.

Using the Kepler space telescope, launched in March 2009, NASA scientists can now measure changes in the brightness of some of the 156,000 stars in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. Such changes indicate that a planet is transiting in front of the star, and they enable astronomers to calculate not just the planet’s physical size, but also its mass and density and thereby its basic makeup—rocky or oceanic versus gas, for example. Since NASA first began releasing Kepler data in February, scientists have confirmed the existence of 17 exoplanets. More than 1,200 other candidates remain to be vetted, and 54 of those candidates lie within the habitable zone of their central star. Dimitar Sasselov, director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative, studies Kepler worlds. He says scientists using the telescope will find an Earth-size planet in a habitable zone within the next two years. “Kepler is a game-changer,” he says. “Not only because of the accelerated rate of planet discovery, but particularly because it reaches out to those planets that we are most interested in and excited about.”

"Kepler is a game-changer. It reaches out to those planets we are most interested in and excited about.

"Scientists are devising ways to test those planets for signs of life directly. Atmospheric spectra in the visible and infrared wavelengths correspond to the presence of various combinations of gases, and some combinations may indicate that life processes are at work. The presence of water, carbon dioxide and ozone on a planet, for example, would indicate that photosynthesis is taking place on its surface.

Scientists do not yet have the tools to determine atmospheric biosignatures at great distances. Funding permitting, in 2018 NASA will join ESA and the Canadian Space Agency to launch the James Webb Space Telescope, which will begin to provide some data. NASA and ESA are also considering concepts for larger, higher-resolution infrared observatories. The New Worlds mission, a NASA project that could fly sometime after 2027, would use an internal coronagraph and an external occulter to block out starlight that can skew biosignature readings. In one concept, the University of Colorado–designed New Worlds Observer, a 160-foot flower-shaped “starshade,” would fly more than 50,000 miles in front of the observatory, casting a shadow onto the telescope and allowing for better resolution of the target exoplanet.

By the time such an observer launched, scientists would have accumulated a sizable roster of promising exoplanets. For now, the best target is Gliese 581 d, a planet 20 light-years away that is at least five times the mass of Earth. This summer, French scientists working with computer models predicted that the planet, which orbits a red-dwarf star at the cold outer edge of its habitable zone, could have a stable atmosphere and liquid surface water. Astronomer Stéphane Udry, whose team at the University of Geneva in Switzerland discovered Gliese 581 d in 2007, says the planet probably formed farther from its sun and then moved to its current position. Ice on the planet could have melted and created oceans as it migrated inward, making it the first known ocean world.

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

Just as scientists can use atmospheric clues to determine how likely it is that life exists on a given planet or moon, they can also use them to guess what form that life might take. Nancy Kiang, a biometeorologist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, says that plants adapted to dim red-dwarf stars might look black because they would have evolved to absorb infrared light. Meanwhile Seth Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute, says that animals, especially those on rocky or oceanic worlds similar to Earth, might have more-familiar designs. Heads, for instance, put the sensory organs—eyes, ears, whiskers—close to the brain, reducing reaction time and increasing an animal’s chances of survival. A design that efficient, he says, would probably be common. At the astrobiology conference in June, Andrei Finkelstein said that aliens would probably look a lot like us: not just a head, but also two arms and two legs. Paleontologist Simon Conway Morris of the University of Cambridge has also put forth a humanoid model of intelligent life.

"We keep looking for critters like us. The majority of intelligence out there is not biological.

"Shostak is not so sure that the highest form of life will be at all familiar, though. “The timescale to go from being technological to having an artificial-based intelligence is very short,” he says. “We keep looking for critters like us living on a planet like ours, where in fact I would argue that the majority of the intelligence out there is not biological” but artificial.

John Priscu is similarly open-minded about the appearance of alien life. “I bet we have looked it straight in the face already,” he says, “but didn’t know what we were looking for."page 3 of 4

A Brief History of Unsolved Encounters

PORTAGE COUNTY UFO CHASE, 1966

On April 17, two officers of the Portage County Sheriff’s Department saw a moving oval-shaped object in the sky near Ravenna, Ohio, around 5 a.m. Joined by two other officers, they pursued the object for 85 miles until they lost sight of it near Conway, Pennsylvania. The incident inspired a similar police chase in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. After an investigation, the Air Force said the officers saw a satellite and Venus. This clashed with the officers’ reports, which said that the object was flying low in the sky and moving from side to side.

"WOW!" SIGNAL, 1977

Astronomer Jerry Ehman stumbled onto a two-minute radio signal from the Big Ear telescope at Ohio State University in which the unique code “6EQUJ5” appeared. Radio telescopes used to use alphanumeric codes to indicate signal intensity. 6EQUJ5 indicated a signal 30 times as loud as normal deep-space radiation, prompting Ehman to scribble “Wow!” in red pen in the margin. The signal has never been explained or seen again. Another mystery: It was broadcast at near 1,420 megahertz, the frequency at which hydrogen resonates and the frequency of choice, scientists think, for extraterrestrial communiqués.

THE RENDLESHAM FOREST INCIDENT, 1980

In late December, Lt.-Colonel Charles Halt took a team of more than a dozen men into England's Rendlesham Forest to follow up on a report of an alien craft. In the forest, they encountered what Halt described as a floating red eye that "suddenly exploded" and began raining down light before disappearing completely. The incident is arguably the most highly documented encounter known: Team members have given corroborating accounts, signed affidavits, and have audiotapes of the encounter. The most common explanation is that the team saw the nearby Orford Ness lighthouse instead.

RICHARD HOOVER'S MICROBES ON A METEORITE, 2011

In a paper published on March 4, NASA scientist Richard Hoover claimed to have found fossilized microorganisms in three carbonaceous chondrite meteorites that date back more than four billion years. The discovery could strengthen the theory that life was delivered to Earth. Some scientists dispute the paper, saying that unique geology or contamination from bacteria here on Earth could explain the results, but opinion in the scientific community remains divided. page 4 of 4

It's great to create equations you will never have to remotely back up.

Math is fun when you create the answer and then figure out the Math to get the answer.

How about we start at just trying to find 1 planet with anything remotely interesting on it. Just one. or even a picture from one of the satellites we launch out of the solar system taking a picture of the closest solar system. Start with the closest sun(s) and go from there.

I like Space and the possibilities, just not scientists who don't know much, but need something to continue to get funding. :x

It's great to create equations you will never have to remotely back up.

Math is fun when you create the answer and then figure out the Math to get the answer.

How about we start at just trying to find 1 planet with anything remotely interesting on it. Just one. or even a picture from one of the satellites we launch out of the solar system taking a picture of the closest solar system. Start with the closest sun(s) and go from there.

I like Space and the possibilities, just not scientists who don't know much, but need something to continue to get funding. :x

A "Goldilocks planet" is a planet that falls within a star's habitable zone, and the name is often specifically used for planets close to the size of Earth.The name comes from the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, in which a little girl chooses from sets of three items, ignoring the ones that are too extreme (large or small, hot or cold, etc.), and settling on the one in the middle, which is "just right". Likewise, a planet following this Goldilocks Principle is one that is neither too close nor too far from a star to rule out liquid water on its surface and thus life (as humans understand it) on the planet. However, planets within a habitable zone that are unlikely to host life (e.g., gas giants) may also be called Goldilocks planets. The best example of a Goldilocks planet is the Earth itself.

The Kepler mission's science team announced its latest finding at a press conference on Monday, Dec. 5, 2011. The team announced the confirmation of Kepler-22b, its first planet found in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth, orbits around a star similar to our sun and is located 600 light-years away. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets. The planet's host star belongs to the same class as our sun, called G-type, although it is slightly smaller and cooler.

Kepler also has discovered 1,094 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Since the last catalog was released in February, the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler has increased by 89 percent and now totals 2,326. Of these, 207 are approximately Earth-size, 680 are super Earth-size, 1,181 are Neptune-size, 203 are Jupiter-size and 55 are larger than Jupiter. The findings, based on observations conducted May 2009 to September 2010, show a dramatic increase in the numbers of smaller-size planet candidates.

This is very much an endless conversation / debatable piece because none of us really know if UFOs &/or Extraterrestrial life exists. I'm very much an openminded person and my thoughts and opinions regarding this topic is pretty much equivalent to the Supernatural. Anything is possible, but I need to actually experience something in order for me to believe.

This is very much an endless conversation / debatable piece because none of us really know if UFOs &/or Extraterrestrial life exists. I'm very much an openminded person and my thoughts and opinions regarding this topic is pretty much equivalent to the Supernatural. Anything is possible, but I need to actually experience something in order for me to believe.

There are many things we take for granted.
The consensus is that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
And there are scientific ways of measuring this, of course.
But most of us don't know how and/or have never bothered.
So we're taking other people's words on even basic stuff like that, never mind extraterrestrial life or supernatural phenomena.
Personally I hope that Bigfoot or the Yeti might be real.

This is very much an endless conversation / debatable piece because none of us really know if UFOs &/or Extraterrestrial life exists. I'm very much an openminded person and my thoughts and opinions regarding this topic is pretty much equivalent to the Supernatural. Anything is possible, but I need to actually experience something in order for me to believe.

UFO's are one thing, and calling the "proof" we have of them dubious is being kind. But extraterrestrial life is a guarantee. There really should be no doubt despite the fact that we haven't yet experienced it. It's statistically near impossible for it not to exist.